


Write on My Skin (Bring Me to Life)

by cattyk8



Category: Veronica Mars (Movie 2014), Veronica Mars (TV), Veronica Mars - All Media Types
Genre: 5+1 Things, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Author has not seen S4 and so can't write about it, Canon compliant until the movie, Canonical Character Death, M/M, More or less (because soulmates), Platonic Soulmates, Romantic Soulmates, Soulmarks, Soulmate marks, VMTAP20
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-21
Updated: 2020-06-21
Packaged: 2021-03-04 08:35:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,916
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24846907
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cattyk8/pseuds/cattyk8
Summary: Five soulmates whose names inscribed themselves on Veronica’s skin, and one name writ twice. (Spoiler: It’s Logan’s.)
Relationships: Cindy "Mac" Mackenzie & Veronica Mars, Lilly Kane & Veronica Mars, Logan Echolls & Veronica Mars, Logan Echolls/Veronica Mars, Wallace Fennel & Veronica Mars, past Duncan Kane/Veronica Mars
Comments: 40
Kudos: 78





	Write on My Skin (Bring Me to Life)

**Author's Note:**

> I made a quickie cover photo for this art so I could crosspost it elsewhere! Click [here](https://flic.kr/p/2je9nKd) or on the banner below to see the full cover image.

[ ](https://flic.kr/p/2je9nKd)

* * *

Soulmarks, everyone knows, must be nurtured to keep their colors writ bright upon your skin, visible proof that you love and are loved.

_**Keith**_ is a blaze of gold at the nape of Veronica's neck, a sunshiny script right beneath the spot the new father learns to settle his hand so he supports his baby girl's head as he holds her for the first time.

_**Lianne**_ is a similar golden color, curving just above one ear where Veronica's mother so often strokes her equally golden hair back whenever she tucks her in at night. Although recently that gold has dulled to a more mundane yellow, with every missed soccer game and every dinner Keith tries to fill with chatter because Lianne is under the weather again.

* * *

# 1\. Lilly

* * *

The day she meets Lilly Kane, Veronica is eight and camped out on the steps of Neptune Elementary School because her mother, once again, is late picking her up.

"Hey, you!"

She looks up in surprise at the yell. A girl with blond pigtails and eyes like meadows is leaning almost completely out of the back window of a town car. Veronica points to herself in the universal gesture of "Who, me?"

"Yes, you! Pink pixie blond girl! Whatchadoing?"

Veronica approaches the car, and the girl, warily. "Waiting for my mom, she's a little late picking me up."

"You live here? In Neptune?"

"Yes. My dad's the sheriff."

"Cool. My daddy's Jake Kane." The other girl says it like that's supposed to mean something.

"I don't know who that is," Veronica confesses.

Plump, pink lips widen into a grin. "That's great! Hop in, I'll give you a ride home."

"Um." She looks at the girl warily. "I'm not supposed to accept rides from strangers." Especially not _strange_ strangers like this one. Eli Navarro, who likes to swipe the other kids' pudding cups but who doesn't dare touch _her_ desserts, would call this girl _loca_ , she is sure. He calls Veronica _loca_ sometimes too, but only to her face, and only when he's smiling.

"I'm Lilly Kane, who are you?"

"I'm Veronica Mars."

"Veronica Mars—I like that! It sounds like you could be a pop star, or maybe have your own TV show one day."

She scrunches up her nose. "Nah. I'm gonna be a cop, like my dad."

"You could be a cop with her own TV show! Like a real-life Nancy Drew! And anyway, that's old people stuff. Right now, we're young and fabulous, and we can be anything in the world!"

"Fabulous?" Veronica asks dubiously.

"Fabulous," the other girl—Lilly Kane, apparently—reassures her with a firmness and confidence Veronica can only envy. "So. Now we aren't strangers. Care to take a ride, Veronica Mars?"

"My parents really wouldn't want me to—"

"I know! You can call them." She pops back into the car and leaves Veronica staring at her reflection on the glossy black surface. Not a minute later, she pops back out of the window and hands over a cell phone.

Veronica's shocked; even as rich as some of the 09ers are, nobody else in Neptune Elementary has a cell phone. Maybe she *should* know the name Jake Kane? "You have a cell phone," she says, a little in awe.

"Yuh, mostly so my mom doesn't get her panties in a twist wondering where I am after school on a sunny day like today." Lilly doesn't roll her eyes, but the way she says that makes Veronica think she's rolling her eyes on the inside.

"Uh... I'm not sure you should let other people use that."

"Eh, just call your mom or dad or whatever! Ask if you can hang out with your new friend Lilly!" She frowns. "You said your dad's the sheriff, right? Why don't I call 9-1-1 and talk to him?"

"That's not how 9-1-1 works," Veronica says, but as Lilly has taken the device and she can hear the dial tone even from where she’s standing, she reluctantly holds a hand out for the phone.

Grinning, Lilly gives it over. Veronica punches in the number for her dad's office. "Hi Inga," she says when the receptionist at the Balboa County Sheriff's Department answers the phone. "Can I talk to my dad?"

Five minutes later, after a chat with Lilly that has no doubt left Keith Mars as shell shocked as his daughter, the sheriff gives his blessing for Veronica to spend the rest of the afternoon at the Kane house.

When he picks her up at half-past six, Veronica's sporting a bright green _**Lilly**_ along the side of her index finger, the one she'd pressed to her new friend's lips in an effort to shush her when the conversation turned to boys in a way that had her blushing fiercely.

Her own name is a cheerful, candy cane red script curling into the inside of Lilly's elbow, from where the other girl had slung her arm around Veronica in a burst of camaraderie. Curiously, it’s her entire name, _**Veronica Mars**_ , instead of just “Veronica” or, as Lilly has shortened it, “Ronica.”

Lilly tells her it’s because clearly the name “Veronica Mars” will be on news screens one day, while she herself will only need one name to leave a legacy. She has way too much fun addressing Veronica by her full name from then on out.

“You’re going to take over the world, Veronica Mars!” Lilly declares. “Just you wait and see.”

“And your own name will be up in lights, Lilly,” she replies, trying to match her friend’s enthusiasm. “I didn’t know soulmarks got so clear so quickly.” Their names had itched themselves into existence, bright and bold and plain to see, within a couple hours of their first meeting.

“That just means we're meant to be bestest, most fabulous friends forever and ever," Lilly says, with all the authority of being several months older than Veronica. "Or until death do us part. Amen."

Veronica laughs. "That's for when people get married, silly!"

But green eyes are perfectly serious as they meet blue. "Best friendship is stronger than marriage, Veronica Mars. Best friendship is stronger than anything, especially since we’re officially soul sisters now. You'll see."

And Lilly hooks their pinkie fingers and makes Veronica swear "til death do us part," a binding vow, even if it's punctuated with giggles and grins.

She's still smiling when she gets home that night, and she doesn't notice the strange look on her mother's face when she tells her where she spent the day.

Years later, she’ll push her way onto a crime scene at the Kanes’ house and see Lilly on the ground by the pool, and that moment will change her life. But as her father starts the investigation into her best friend’s death, she’ll look at that lime-colored name on her finger, now a deep forest green in the darkness of night, and she’ll realize even death doesn’t dare part true soulmates.

* * *

# 2\. Duncan

* * *

She doesn’t get a soulmark for Duncan the first time she meets him. Not even the first dozen times they meet. 

His mark appears in the faintest of blue, almost like a pale bruise, on the back of her left wrist the first time he asks her out. She says no, because she’s pretty sure Lilly put him up to it (“Just think, Ronica, we could be sisters for real if you married Duncan!”). 

But he keeps asking, and he smiles gently every time she says no, his eyes clear and blue and calm (later, the uncharitable part of her will substitute “calm” for “tepid” and maybe even “vacant”).

His mark eventually solidifies into a sky blue rendering of _**Duncan**_ in block letters. She wears only the slimmest of watches so as not to hide it away as they date through the eighth grade, and by the time they’ve lasted through freshman year, they’re officially Neptune High’s old married couple, even without having gone past first base.

Her own mark on his wrist is _**Veronica**_ in bright, cheerful pink, with a heart dotting the “I” like she likes to do through all of middle school.

They’ve just moved on to second base when he ends things between them one day. With no warning, he starts acting like she doesn’t exist, apart from the occasional guilty sideways glance. Starts wearing this chunky watch on his wrist, covering her name. The school grapevine tells her it’s a Rolex Submariner worth over $5,000 and Shelly Pomroy is already licking at his heels.

Lilly tells her it’s the Donut being an idiot. Then she tells Veronica’s there are more fish in the sea than her stupid brother anyway, and that no way should a red satin girl like _her_ best friend settle for someone as yellow and cotton as Duncan Kane, anyhow. 

The blue pales again, but doesn’t fade. But Veronica’s not entirely willing to give up on Duncan, so she doesn’t cover up his mark the way he’s done hers, not even after Lilly dies and those guilty glances stop coming. Not even when he looks blank—dazed and glazed (empty in the center and Donut-like) even when he does happen to see her. 

It’s not until the day after Shelly Pomroy’s party that she realizes the blue on her wrist has gone gray.

When she revamps her look for the next year, she makes sure her very first purchase is a heavy watch, which she tells her dad is a practical choice—it’s waterproof, lights up in the dark with the push of a button, and tells both time and date. She also buys thick leather cuffs, a complement to her newer, edgier style. But the truth is, she just doesn’t like reminders of who she used to be, especially the kind that’s written on her skin.

That lifeless gray text never goes blue again.

Not when she finds out his secrets.

Not when they get back together in senior year.

By the time she sees Kendall Casablancas stepping out of his bathroom, it’s the color of smoke.

She doesn’t realize it until later, but that last wispy imprint vanishes the last time she sees Duncan and his baby.

“Goodbye, Veronica,” he says, stroking her face. “I love you. Always have, always will.”

He’s not wearing a watch, and she can see her name on his wrist in that pink, childish cursive, its heart dotting the letter I. But she hasn’t written her name like that in a long time.

She steps away. Smile perhaps a little wobbly—Duncan is her last real tie to Lilly, after all—she says, “You better!”

And her own wrist feels cool; she tucks it under her crossed arms as she watches him go. She’ll only realize when she gets home later that his name has all but evaporated from her skin.

She barely feels the loss of it.

* * *

# 3\. Logan

* * *

They meet on a soccer field the day after Logan’s parents move him to Neptune. Duncan has been full of stories of the boy who’d razzled and dazzled his way around peers and adults alike during their years together at the exclusive all-boys elementary school he’d attended right up until the Kanes had up and enrolled him in Neptune.

She knows he’ll be bringing him around after the game, but she’s not thinking about that much. No, she’s fully committed to pulverizing the team from Pan Middle School, and with the help of her teammate Carmen Ruiz, Neptune is crushing it. They call the game at 2-0, with Neptune for the win, and she lets out a triumphant war cry at the ruling, before her team exchanges sweaty hugs and then goes over to shake hands with the girls from Pan.

Once the bulk of the celebrations are over, she dashes toward the end of the field where her newly minted boyfriend and her soul-bestie are waiting. Lilly’s staring at the boy sitting between her and Duncan, and her gaze is all but predatory. Lilly was boy-crazy throughout middle school, though, and it’s only gotten worse since she became a freshman at Neptune High, so this is nothing new to Veronica. 

“Liiiiillllyyyyyyyy!” she hollers as she runs toward her friend. “Incomiiiing!”

Except Lilly jumps behind the boy she was staring at, using the opportunity to plaster herself (and the bountiful bosom she started growing in sixth grade) against the boy’s back. Veronica had intended to tackle-hug her best friend, mostly because the way Lilly scrunches her face up at the prospect of a sweaty bestie never fails to make her laugh. But this means she’s built up too much momentum to keep from crashing into the boy, who staggers under the impact. 

“Oof!” he says, rubbing his side, where she’s elbowed him. It’ll be a few days later, when they’re all swimming in the Kane pool, when she’ll realize the name _**Ronnie**_ is drawn in magenta along his ribcage. She also realizes Lilly’s name is inscribed flirtily along one bicep.

“Ahhh! Poopsicle!” she yells as she tries to pull back, only to lose her balance. He steadies her by pulling her into a kind of half-hug, and the warmth from his hand settles onto her shoulder blade. Later, Lilly will squeal at the orange _**Logan**_ writ in a looping scrawl on Veronica’s back, right where his hand had been. 

Later that week, Lilly shows off the “Logan” low on her hip, and there’s really only one way she could’ve gotten that one. And before the next school year begins, Veronica, Lilly, Duncan, and Logan have styled themselves the Fab Four—so named by none other than the Kane heiress, of course—seeing as they’re all sporting each other’s names. 

“Fab Four forever!” Lilly cheers at a bonfire on the beach the week before school starts. 

And Logan, it seems, slots right into their group. He makes Lilly light up and appreciates her flirty, frolicky ways. He calls Duncan “DK”—reflecting his own blue tattoo on the palm of his hand, where he and Duncan had apparently clasped hands in friendship back in grade school—and encourages him to live outside his parents’ shadow a little. 

He calls Veronica _Ronnie_ , and he alone can claim this privilege by virtue of their soulmarks. For her, he’s a fierce protector and a bit of a tease, challenging her to come out of her shell a little, baiting her into snark fests that leave Lilly giggling and Duncan perplexed. He tells her he got her name in hot pink because she might be pink, but she’s nobody’s pastel miss, not really. Not deep down.

Veronica very purposefully does not think about the delicate shade of her name on Duncan’s wrist.

In no time flat, he’s her best friend, after Lilly, and no one is more surprised than Veronica when she learns that they can talk to each other about things the Kanes would either dismiss as boring or find blatantly ridiculous. They share a love of cult films and adventure-filled books, and if few beyond Veronica know that the 09ers’ Golden Boy is a raging bibliophile, well. Lilly Kane has taught Veronica that secrets are meant to be savored.

The day Duncan’s soulmark begins to fade, Veronica checks Lilly’s and Logan’s, but they still blaze bright and true upon her skin. 

The day she rats Logan out to Lilly for kissing another girl during a party, that orange still gleams on her back like a sunset, even though Logan’s not talking to her.

After Lilly dies and everything goes to hell, and Logan morphs into the school’s Obligatory Psychotic Jackass, she finds herself wondering why that orange doesn’t fade. Worse, throughout junior year, she finds him wearing orange multiple times a week. Like he’s tormenting her with both the color of his soulmark on her skin _and_ his awful fashion choices.

She wonders, sometimes, if “Ronnie” still tickles at his ribs in magenta. 

She learns it does the night his father tries to kill her and her dad, when he comes to her door bruised and bloody and she helps him wrap his ribs, seeing for the first time not just his soulmarks—her own name, plus _Lilly_ and _Lynn_ and _DK_ and _Dick_ and even _Trina_ —but also the scars Aaron Echolls belted into his back.

She’s fiercely glad _Aaron_ isn’t one of the names written on Logan. He tells her it used to be, but it had vanished by the first time Aaron caused Logan to break a bone.

“You haven’t been _Ronnie_ for a while,” Logan tells her as her fingertips skim the name which almost glows in the dark against his tanned skin, “but the Ronnie that you were will always mean a lot to me, one of the best friends I ever had. You, Veronica, are still my best friend, but also so much more now.”

One of her biggest regrets in life will be forgetting that fact, in her pursuit of normalcy and her need to divorce herself from Logan’s self-implosion following the escalating violence with the PCHers following the murder of Felix Toombs. 

Later, much later, after nine years of silence, Logan will have her up against a pillar, and she’ll pull his shirt open and see that near-neon _Ronnie_ still emblazoned on his side. He’ll lay his palm on her shoulder blade, against that still-orange _Logan_ , and they’ll kiss. 

She’ll learn that “Wait, don’t go” is the only thing she ever needed to say to Logan Echolls.

* * *

# 4\. Wallace

* * *

She doesn’t realize right away that “Wallace” has printed itself onto the back of her upper arm, right where his own arm had brushed hers as they watched Logan Echolls open his locker to find a bong in it. The neat letters are etched in a color like cinnamon that later inspires her to pick snickerdoodles as the cookie to put in his spirit boxes (that she doesn’t tell him are from her for far too long). 

The warm orangey-brown of it is so close to Logan’s mark that it makes her heart ache sometimes; she doesn’t know why Logan’s mark hasn’t faded or changed colors like Duncan’s did, when it seems the situation between her and the so-called King of the 09ers is much, much worse than the one between her and the Kane heir.

She’s not ready for a new friend, or anything else. But Wallace bulls into her life, sitting at her table even though it’s in the middle of the outdoor dining area and doesn’t have an umbrella. He won’t just let her work on his “case,” he insists on being by her side every step of the way. Down to flipping the switch to sabotage the evidence.

Even when she assures him he’ll be free and clear of the PCHers’ harassment, at least over the whole video tape thing, he doesn’t just leave her to the rest of her life.

He tells her, “Underneath that angry-young-woman shell, there’s a slightly less angry young woman who’s just dying to bake me something. You’re a marshmallow, Veronica Mars, a Twinkie.”

She thinks of his soulmark on her arm, but she’s learned not to trust her soulmarks anymore, and right when she wavers, thinking to mention it, the reason for that mistrust rides up with his posse. Logan Echolls takes a tire iron to her car, and she imagines she feels it on her shoulder blade, right where his name is. But she checks later that night, and those letters are still jackass orange, so she says nothing to the other guy whose orangey name appears on her arm, either. 

Even when he shows her the mark on his wrist, a verdant _Veronica_ the exact same shade of her hoodie that first day they met which he says appeared right after she cut him down from the flagpole, she doesn’t say anything. She also doesn’t wonder what it means, that her name on his skin is almost exactly the color of Lilly’s on hers.

She doesn’t show him her soulmark until the day she tells him her other big secrets: what happened at Shelly Pomroy’s party and her investigation into Lilly’s murder.

Funnily enough, Alicia’s protests over their friendship die that day too. After all, it’s widely known that someone who has your name on their skin can only have your best interests at heart. Veronica capitalizes on that assumption, even if she’s not entirely convinced it’s true. Because _**Logan**_ is still orange on her back, after all.

Years later, Veronica will laugh when Wallace asks her to wear green to his wedding. 

She’ll trust him to support her, even when he disagrees with her.

When she gets together with Logan after nine years of radio silence, he’ll laugh and shake his head, but show no surprise.

And when they’re old and gray, they’ll joke about marshmallows with crusty exteriors.

He never does stop begging her for snickerdoodles.

* * *

# 5\. Mac

* * *

_**Mac**_ shows up on Veronica’s arm, almost a twin to Wallace’s except on the other side, the day she tries to talk one Cindy “Mac” Mackenzie out of crashing the party of her alter-self, Madison Sinclair. It’s in a cobalt shade similar to the streak in Mac’s hair. 

Her discovery of a matching mark on Mac’s arm comes over a year later, when she’s helping her friend into some borrowed clothes on what might just be the worst night of Mac’s life. It would’ve been the worst night of her life too, if Cassidy had managed to shoot Logan on the rooftop of the Neptune Grand, and if her father really had blown up in that airplane along with Woody Goodman.

It’s not til they’re freshmen at Hearst that Mac tells her the blue _**Veronica**_ on her arm appeared faintly on the day the teenage PI first jimmied her rust bucket of a car open, but didn’t really fill out until she’d exposed the secret of the great Neptune Memorial Hospital baby swap of 1987. Mac laughs as she tells Veronica the blue is the same color of the folder glide she’d used to break into her car.

It does Veronica a lot of good to have a girl friend again, and one who doesn’t have all the weight of her relationship with Meg Manning, which is complicated by the fact that Meg dates Duncan in their junior year, at least until Duncan dumps the taller blonde. 

It’s Mac who commiserates with Veronica over her guilt, knowing her own _**Duncan**_ mark remains grayed out while Meg’s is brilliantly blue on the back of her hand. And _**Meg** _is rose pink and cursive over Duncan’s heart, right where Meg rested her head as they swayed to music in the middle of an ‘80s-themed dance hall. The pink is the exact same shade of Meg’s dress that night. It’s only to Mac, much later, that Veronica confesses that she never once had an orgasm with Duncan. But even Mac doesn’t know she wonders if it’s partially because she can’t block out the sight of Meg’s name on his chest.

It’s not til their freshman year at Hearst that Veronica gets up the courage to show Mac the _**Logan**_ written on her skin. 

Logan breaks up with her a few weeks later, saying something about a “tough but survivable amount of pain” (which is complete and utter bullshit because from that moment until the point she knocks on his door at the Grand and they reunite, the Logan-sized hole in her life feels like something that should kill her, and she does not understand why she’s still walking around and solving cases like she’s not dying). 

And it’s Mac most of all who helps Veronica keep her head on straight, even when it’s Mac’s roommate whom Logan ends up dating.

Still, it won’t be until years later that Veronica will get how Mac has always nudged her Loganward. From college talks about eggplant and fettuccine to casually keeping her updated on major milestones in Logan’s life without too much of Veronica’s prodding—something she’ll never admit to being grateful for, no matter that she had told the guy he was out of her life forever—Mac has always been Team Logan, where Veronica’s love life is concerned.

Of course, it might be because _**Logan**_ never leaves Veronica’s skin, or fades, or changes color. 

Veronica doesn’t admit that part of the reason she didn’t go all the way with Piz was because even when she’d taken off her shirt and they were in his bed, no part of his name had ever graced her skin. And when he’d moved his hand to cover Logan’s, she’d felt like an adulteress.

In the wake of the disaster with the Castle her father losing the election for Balboa County Sheriff, she transfers to Stanford, keeping in touch with the owners of just three of the four names still bright upon her skin: Keith, Wallace, and Mac. 

Years later, she’ll come home from New York to help Logan prove he didn’t murder Carrie Bishop, and Mac and Wallace will conspire to get her to attend their high school reunion with them. Mac will help Veronica dress up, and she’ll give Logan's name on Veronica’s skin a knowing look before bumping her shoulder so their own marks touch companionably.

When Veronica and Logan finally tie the knot, it’s Mac who gives Veronica her “something blue”—a silk navy garter.

Mac even highlights her hair in a striking cobalt for the occasion.

Even when they’re geriatric, Veronica will smirk whenever Q calls her Bond.

* * *

# +1. Logan (Again)

* * *

As rare as it is for soulmarks to disappear completely, it’s even rarer for soulmarks to duplicate themselves, but Logan Echolls, it seems, will always be the exception to the rules governing the life and times of Veronica Mars.

A solid _**Logan**_ , even bolder than the one on her back, appears just above her heart the day she comforts a broken-hearted boy in the lobby of an LA hotel. Typically, it’s in jackass yellow, the color of banana peels, smiley faces, and a certain Nissan Xterra. 

It freaks her out when she returns home that night and sees it in her reflection in the bathroom mirror while she’s getting ready for bed. 

When Meg comes over and coaxes Veronica into being her date for Total Eclipse of the Heart, Veronica almost refuses when she sees the outfit Meg brought. Manila whore Barbie, indeed. But she carefully covers up Logan’s name and gamely lets Meg do up her hair and help her get dressed.

By the time Logan kisses her on the balcony of the Camelot Motel, right after he decks a federal agent to defend her, his name is a gold so brilliant, she’s surprised it doesn’t shine right through her clothes.

It’s at that moment that she realizes her own name is on his nape. It’s right where she’d put her hand as she’d comforted him in his grief over his mom. The first time they kiss, she throws her arms around him, slides her hand from his shoulder to his nape. The feel of the letters of her name, _**Veronica**_ , are raised against her fingertips, like a scar or the reverse of an engraving.

The feel of it shocks her, and she pulls away. She stares at him a moment. His eyes are made of chocolate, and the look in them makes her feel warm and gooey and all but melts her insides. He— _they_ , the idea that they could be a _them_ and it could be for _always_ —frightens her so thoroughly she backs away and dashes for her car. 

Yet anytime she’s near him, his name prickles on her skin, and she wonders if she has the same effect on him.

The first time Logan sees the mark, he is speechless, his hand trembling as he runs his thumb over the shine of his name on her skin, his eyes dark pools of something unnamable that leave Veronica feeling like she’s drowning, but also like she’s been baptized and washed of shame and fault and flaw.

He makes her feel like the universe, like order and chaos all at once.

It takes multiple breakups and murders, nine years of radio silence, and trials by fire through addiction and tragedy and law school (their story is epic, spanning years and continents, lives ruined, blood shed—epic) before they finally get together once and for all. Or, more aptly, _always_. 

In the end, no matter how she might deny it—and she boards Duncan and Piz and Leo and a few others on her boat as she traverses that river of denial, then shores up the banks with Kendall and Madison and Parker, that’s how hard she fights it—Logan remains the golden sun in her life, the proof of it written over her very heart.

She’s always been afraid of how she orbits him, caught in his gravity and moving in circles because her soul shrivels the farther away she ventures.

Her mother’s name was golden too, once. _**Lianne**_ had long since turned the brown of dead leaves, and the woman hadn’t even waited for Veronica to reach adulthood to abandon her.

Part of Veronica fears that gold more than anything.

But Logan’s smile is soft and understanding.

Logan stays when Veronica says things like “Wait, don’t go.”

And every time she says, “Come back to me,” his response is the same.

“Always.”

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from the first verse of Fifth Harmony’s “[Write on Me](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7WuggM1WBiU).”
> 
> Many, many thanks to [His_Beautiful_Girl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/his_beautiful_girl) for betaing this fic for me when I finished it and was jonesing to post it. Soulmate Islanders unite!
> 
> Also, I should mention that some time ago, I dropped a wish in [VM Fic Club](http://bit.ly/vmfcdiscord)’s Wishing Well for more Veronica Mars soulmate fics. Then when Soulmates AU was announced as a battle trope for the fandom [Trope-a-Palooza](http://tropeapalooza.tilda.ws/) event, I happened on a scrap of an idea I don’t even remember writing, and it turned into this fic. The rest, as they say, is history.


End file.
